


Something Wicked

by impossiblewanderings



Category: Jekyll (TV), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Hiatus-timeline, Multi, and Disgruntled Watson, and Mrs Hudson knits things, and regret and torture and revenge and fear and hauntings, lots of Ridiculously Evil Hyde, lots of guns and blood and shenanigans and awful sweaters and cigarettes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-25
Updated: 2013-02-25
Packaged: 2017-12-03 14:28:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/699250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossiblewanderings/pseuds/impossiblewanderings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John always seems to attract the weirdoes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

Beyond the door there is something terrible. Tom knows that, he can hear the _thump-thump-thump_ of something deadly, something very sharp out there in the darkness.

But here he is safe, in his office with the worn leather chair and his coffee cup holding up the photograph of Claire and his children. It was taken perhaps four years ago, or three, Tom can’t quite remember and it might not matter. They are happy in the photograph, the boys laughing in a pile of orange and brown leaves, their hair tangled, and Claire, his Claire with no lines under her bold eyes. They are all so happy.

His keyboard is full of dust. When he types, it floats across the screen, blurring his research. He is writing about the mind, what a place it is, full of trapdoors. Full of traps.

_“Daddy.”_

Tom shivers. He tries not to see Hyde where he is crouched in the corner, his pale limbs jerking like a spider. He refuses to meet those black eyes.

The words on the screen are a jumble of numbers and letters.

_“I’m bleeding, Daddy.”_

Tom clenches his teeth.

_The idea of precognition as a purely parapsychological construct limits researchers to a theoretical approach. If there is to be developments made in this area then_

The cursor blinks expectantly, endlessly.

His office door rattles in its frame. The slicing sound is growing closer, louder. A helicopter, Tom knows somehow. That is not the bad thing. That is not why he tipped backwards inside his own head. He is hiding from something.

Hyde moans softly in his corner. He thumps the back of his skull into the wall three times.

Tom glares at his computer. His eyes burn against the white glow, and what he reads makes his head hurt.

_Tsopqrilq8848IFDH ikdkifeAFHFHVHGNN SIKAIjadjfj kjfjefqr{“TG;KLGNF FAQELK SKS sqajnc dwlkfjot PRPCHH. Thap diw sjaL;DJWOLNDKW S Qsdjfk9ot4og9ga fsklf ffffffff_

The helicopter blades cut off suddenly, and the dull buzz of static shrouds the room.

_“Daddy.”_

Tom freezes, his hands shrinking back from the keyboard.

“Why did it stop?” He asks the man in the corner. This isn’t how this happened. Tom remembers this. Hyde came and took his hand, like touching lightning, fire along his veins and in his brain, and then the great cold blanket of the sky – what is happening?

_“They’ve taken all my blood. I don’t have a drop left. They took it all.”_

And at last Tom turns to look at Hyde and normally he is so vibrant, black and white and red and all _teeth_ but the skin flakes from Hyde’s sunken face. He has no eyes at all, just shrivelled holes. He looks like a corpse left to dry in the desert, hollow and light as the husk of an insect. As he watches Hyde lifts his right arm to his mouth and takes a great bite, tearing away strips of flesh that turn to leather against his clicking teeth.

“ _I’m so hungry_.” Hyde says.

Beneath his skin Tom can see the yellow curve of his skull.

“You’re supposed to save me.” Tom tells his other half, and Hyde chokes on his own ulna to rasp out a bitter laugh.

_“I think it’s your turn.”_

“You’re dead. You died. I can’t save you.”

_“You can. You must.”_

“I don’t _want_ to save you!” Tom screams, his heart jolting in his chest with hate and fear and he wakes drowning in a puddle of white sheets, Claire tense by his side. She has lines on her face she never had before all of this. She has permanent shadows under her eyes. They both do.

Tom Jackman stays awake the rest of the night, straining for the first glimpse of dawn. The sweat on his body cools and his heart stops banging against his ribs, but the fear does not subside.


	2. One

John Watson is not, to the best of his knowledge, an idiot. He has, on occasion wondered if insanity runs in his family - why else would he consent to live in a flat that has been blown up, broken into and played host to an increasingly gruesome array of human body parts - but insanity and idiocy are completely different things.

(He did not ever question whether _Sherlock_ was insane. It was just part and parcel of his nature, like his eyes - the exact colour of ice before it shatters.)

But it stands to reason that when Sherlock - _died_ , because _left_ is a lie that does not soften the truth at all, cannot curve itself around his friend’s bones to stop them breaking- that maybe the bottom didn’t drop out of everyone’s lives. That perhaps some people, honestly, just didn’t realise the detective was gone, and therefore unable to solve their petty little problems.

(He gets so _bitter_ now. Is that part of grief, or is he shrivelling into an angry old man, glaring out at the world that wronged Sherlock and then forgot him?)

So when the man comes flying into their flat, sweating heavily, a laptop bag swinging wildly under his elbow, and asks him if he’s Sherlock Holmes, John’s first thought is that someone is playing a cruel joke.

“No, I’m not.” He says tersely, and the dull anger that sits in his chest flares a little, making it difficult to take a full breath.

“I thought-“

“He’s dead. Sherlock Holmes … died. I can’t help you. I’m not a detective.”

“But I need help!”

“Go to the police then.”

The man jerks his elbow out of John’s firm grasp, preventing him from expelling his unwanted presence from th … _his_ flat.

“ _Please_ ,” The man says, and his eyes are wide and intense behind his fogged-up glasses.

“I promised I would help him! I _promised_.”

There is something desperate in his tone, something wild, pleading - _Keep your eyes on me John_ \- and John freezes, stupidly, with one foot on the stairs to stare at the stranger who has no idea what ghosts he is stirring, clutching his computer in front of the fireplace.

* * *

 

Alexander Melas was not supposed to be working that day. But Jim had called him in - an old friend who had been working for a private corporation for the past few years, never able to tell Alex anything specific, only how it would change the world- and while Alex finds Jim annoying, with his arrogant tone and his top-secret phone calls and how he wears his lab coat as though it’s a general’s stripes, the price he quoted over the phone was enough to get him out of bed and scrambling for pen and paper to write down the address.

Alex thought at first he’d written down the wrong number. He had walked hesitantly towards the old manor house, gravel crunching under his shoes, and was terribly relieved when Jim rounded the corner, the ends of his ever-present lab coat flapping.

“What is this about, Jim?” Alex asked guardedly as they walked through the echoing entranceway, heading towards the doors of an elevator whose sharp modernity clashed with the graceful lines of the old house. There were security guards with automatic weapons ringing the floor above them. He could feel the prickle of their eyes on the back of his neck as they studied him.

“Three figures just for a consult? What the hell are you doing down there, making supermen?”

Jim just laughed and clapped him on the back as they stepped inside.

“Something like that.”

The elevator seemed to go down about twenty floors, which was impossible for Alex to conceive. And when the doors opened the burst of white on his retinas made him fling a hand over his eyes.

“Just hang on a minute.” Jim said cheerfully from somewhere beside him.

“Your eyes will adjust. It took some getting used to, believe me.”

Alex let Jim march him along the corridor while he was still half-blinded, catching only fleeting glimpses of other people in lab coats striding about, checking data on computers and muttering quietly to each other over clipboards.

And suddenly there were outside a door which read _Exam Room 1_ , and Jim had a hand on his shoulder, pushing him inside.

“Here’s your patient, Alex! You’ve got twenty minutes. There’ll be people watching on the screens - you’re perfectly safe. I’ve got to run.”

“What? Jim, you haven’t told me what’s going on! Who is my patient?”

Jim’s carefree laugh seemed a little hollow this time, and his eyes flicked past Alex to the room beyond.

“Oh, he’s a character. She just wants to know how he’s doing, physically speaking. Just do your usual thing.”

And then the door slammed in Alex’s face.

* * *

 

Hyde wakes, or something close to it, and focuses on his bound and wired hands. He can still feel the drugs in his bloodstream, and once he had no control but to follow its winding, surging path short of tearing out the veins through which they travelled - but now …

If he concentrates, it’s almost like the sea, like purple and red waves flowing in and out and if he tries, he can stop the darkness from taking his eyes, he can hold them deep and secret in the puzzles of his veins and stop them reaching the shore.

He grins, stretches his teeth until it hurts his face and then more to feel the sting, to remind himself that he is alive and he is awake and he will not let them drug him again.

Hyde can feel her eyes on him, beyond the glass. He hates her, his _Mother_ , with her grinding voice and her flat black eyes. He hates her more because beneath his hate there is a thread of fear that runs far deeper, that makes him shiver when she speaks to him, that makes him baulk at her commands and then obey them, snarling weakly at her through the bars of his prison.

His ears catch the static of the intercom before her voice crackles through it, and his skin crawls at the thought of her, invisible, omnipresent, that ugly bitch crowing her triumph every time she sees him bound or caged.

He hunches his shoulders and watches one of the whitecoats place a plastic maze on the table in front of him.

“Control the mouse and get it to the centre of the maze.” Mother commands, and Hyde gleefully imagines her lungs shredding themselves to grey, fleshy pieces.

He watches the mouse clean its little furry face with its tiny pink claws and recalls hunger. How long since they fed him? Weeks? His stomach claws and howls. He wants to swallow the little thing whole, nose to tail, let it slide down his throat to quell the pain in his belly.

Hyde leans forward, too eagerly, and comes up short. He can’t reach the maze - Mother has ensured it, he knows, the wormridden _bitch,_ he wants to tear out her throat and spill her guts onto the white white floors and hear her screams as he stalks her through the empty rooms - and he thrashes against his bonds, anger lending his wasted limbs a little strength.

“Stop wasting time.” Mother growls high above him.

Hyde twists his head to look at the whitecoat in the corner of the lab, taking notes on his clipboard. The eyes that meet his above the surgical mask are silver, like coins or clouds or the grey line of the ocean - and he has a vague, very fuzzy memory of having seen those eyes before, closer, from below.

The scientist’s heartbeat is regular, not at all elevated with adrenaline. No fear being so close to a monster? No fear at all? He blends in remarkably well, but not enough to fool Hyde. He catches the man’s eyes again, grins slow and exceedingly sharp.

“ _Who of them is not like the others_

_Who of them does not belong?”_

He sing-songs, his throat scratchy and raw, and giggles.

The silver eyes do not change though he watches them with eagerness.

 _“Hyde_! You will do what I say! Do it now!”

He turns to where Mother stands, can almost make out her form behind the dull mirror-glass, and stares.

“Yes, _Mommy_.” He smiles for her, smiles as he would if he were cornering her with all her defences stripped away and she was _food_ and he was _hungry_ -

And the mouse does nothing at all.

Above, dogs begin to bark in the surrounding houses. They howl mournfully at the sky, and they scratch at their fences and doors and bay for blood.

Birds rise up in great clouds from the wood and shatter themselves on the windows of the house, leaving dark smears of blood. Guards and scientists alike stare and point as wave after wave smash themselves against the house, followed by ragged lines of bats blind in the sunlight.

The sound system begins to wail and hiss, drowning out Mother’s words.

And still the mouse darts here and there, cleans its white fur, blinks its tiny red eyes, and shows no sign of being controlled.

It hurts Hyde to keep all those tiny minds under the dominion of his. His nose bleeds and he relishes the salty taste as it drips into his mouth like a dehydrated man drinks his sweat.

But finally he falters, and just like that all the animals are released. Hyde sits, gasping for breath in the sudden silence, sweat shimmering on his face and hair.

But he has frightened Mother and thoroughly, for next the door is slammed open and there are men with guns and whitecoats with syringes pouring through to get at him.

The mouse squints over at Hyde and he cocks his head to watch it, reminded suddenly of a man with light glinting off the rims of his glasses, his hands shaking as he takes Hyde’s bony wrist - _I’ll help you, I promise I’ll get help I won’t leave you here_ \- and he can’t recall if it was a dream or reality.

The whitecoat with the grey eyes has vanished from his corner as though he never were, Hyde realises as he is injected once, twice, five times, tiny bites from each needle on the sunken veins of his arms and legs.

Curiously enough, he wishes Tom Jackman were here.

He is very tired.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Little bit of borrowing from Conan Doyle's 'The Greek Interpreter'.


	3. Two

“Jesus.”

“Yep.”

“I mean - _Jesus_.”

“Believe me, I know.”

“Did you, and legally I have to ask this because I am technically still a policeman, even if I’m here off-duty, did you _shoot_ anybody?”

“No.”

“Did your mate shoot anybody?”

“What- no! He doesn’t even own a gun.”

“Did anyone see you?”

“Mr Melas disabled the security systems. All the cameras were off.”

Greg Lestrade and John stand side by side, staring down at the unconscious man currently sprawled on what was once Sherlock’s couch. John is making a careful effort to be calm and professional, though his trigger finger is twitching against the sleeve of his jacket.

Adrenaline is still flooding through him, and John is irrationally angry. Maybe not so because of the situation he was placed in by Melas, or having a victim of kidnapping and medical experiments buried under every blanket he owns in his flat without his permission. But Greg is only trying to help. It’s not his fault that every word he says makes John want to bite through his own tongue.

It’s the hair that makes him feel sick.

Dark and curly, but the hairline is different, this man doesn’t have those loose curls that sometimes fell across his face when he ran after a murderer - and he’s tall, maybe as tall as Sherlock was - and though John digs his fingernails into the flesh of his arms and wills himself to blindness, he keeps thinking that it’s him, that these last horrible months have never happened.

His mind tricks him, a dead man forever painted in his peripheral vision, lounging on the cushions, his elegant fingers steepled together and his wondrous mind a-whirl with brilliant thoughts.

John’s eyes burn, but he won’t wipe them where the other men can see.

“He looks bloody awful.”

Greg is leaning forward to study his patient, his hands buried in his pockets. It’s an understatement, to say the least.

“Well, he was starved, clearly. He’s dangerously dehydrated and been kept probably pretty consistently on sedatives. I don’t know what the hell kind of tests they’ve been doing on him, and I won’t know the full extent of the damage until he wakes up.”

 _If he wakes up_ , is what John doesn’t say, but it hangs in the air all the same. He’s rigged up an I.V using a hatstand and equipment he’s always had on hand since moving in with Sherlock. It was easier than going to the hospital, especially considering he would have had to drag Sherlock kicking and screaming every step of the way.

Mr Melas, who has been sitting quietly behind them, inches forward, his eyes magnified by his glasses until he looks like some inquisitive forest creature.

“Y-you mean…there might be brain damage?”

John rubs a hand over his eyes. He’s exhausted in body and spirit, and he wishes that everyone would just _leave_ and let him sleep.

“Maybe.” He answers bluntly.

Alexander Melas looks stricken, and immediately John regrets his words.

“Look, you were good to get him out when you did. I don’t know how much longer he would have lasted in those conditions.”

(Why does he feel the need to do that, to make other people feel better? _Because you’re a nice person_ , Sherlock said once. _Nice is boring in most people, but in you - it’s like a mask. It’s like armour. And under it all is the soldier._ )

But Melas just shakes his head and stares at John grimly.

“He would have lasted for as long as they needed him to.”

“Why didn’t you just take him to the hospital?”

Greg has turned to eye them both, a wry twist to his lips.

Melas shakes his head frantically, spreading his hands as though Lestrade means to pick the man up and carry him off right there and then.

“No, no, we _can’t_! You don’t understand how large this organisation is. They have influence everywhere. People in the medical system, in the police, maybe even in government! We’ve probably only just scratched the surface of what they do! If we left him at a hospital, they’d just take him away again.”

Greg raises his eyebrows and shares a look with John, and yes, he understands that Melas is coming off as a crazed conspiracy theorist, but he went there and saw that underground lab. Whoever these people are, they have money and power, enough to have a person just disappear without it making headlines.

“What did you say this company was called?”

“Klein and Utterson.” John says, and it’s a familiar name. They’re a world leader in research and development. They employ the top scientists from around the world. There’s a rumour they’re developing, among other things, the cure for cancer. Not a management plan, or advances in chemotherapy, but a _cure_.

Greg nods to himself thoughtfully and then checks his watch.

“Shit. Well, it’s only three hours until I was supposed to get up  anyway, so I’ll go work on getting us a warrant to search this place. If we find anything on these guys, I’m going to need him alive to testify, yeah?”

John sketches a salute.

“Yes. Thanks. I’ll take that on board when I’m treating him, shall I?”

“And you,” Greg points, wheeling around at the door to lock eyes with Melas, “you’d best stay local. If these people are as dangerous as you make out, they’re not going to be too happy about you rescuing their prize lab rat. John will give you my number. Call me if any black vans start following you around.”

John listens to him thump down the stairs and the slam of the front door. It drives a spike of pain into his already uncomfortable headache and he goes into the kitchen to retrieve some of his heavy-duty pain tablets. He turns to find Melas hovering awkwardly in the entrance. It is John’s experience that sharing dangerous situations with other people tends to bring you closer together, but it seems Melas is a stranger to combat-induced camaraderie. As promised, John scrawls Lestrade’s number on the back of a grocery receipt for him and shows him to the door.

To his surprise, Melas asks for his mobile number as well and types it into his phone slowly and carefully.

“Call me when he’s well. I won’t be able to sleep properly until I can shake that poor man’s hand, and forget how I first saw him, rotting down there all alone.”

“I will.” John promises, and they shake on it.

As Melas’ dark coat begins to blur with the shadows of Baker Street, John calls out to him.

“Did your friend say what his name was?”

Melas turns and walks backwards a few paces, his face a pale blur against the darkness, and his answer floats back.

“Hyde. Jim called him Mr Hyde.”

* * *

 

Mrs Utterson stands behind the computer monitors, her face twisted into a rictus scowl.

“Who are they?” She snaps, her eyes darting between the two blurry figures on the security footage. Klein and Utterson keep cameras everywhere, and she knows the location of every single one. The person who hacked their security system had done a good job of it, but not a perfect one. And that would be their downfall, once she caught up with them.

One of the scientists comes cringing forward, his eyes bruised with deep shadows. It’s nearing three in the morning, and the staff she has gathered for questioning are dressed in a combination of pyjamas, baggy jumpers and rumpled lab coats.

“Um, Ma’am, that one on the left - that’s Alexander Melas. I know him.”

“Who is he?”

“Just a…a nutritionist we brought in to consult on….about Hyde?”

“You said he could be trusted.”

The man is gasping, sweating like a pig, his hands clasped in supplication.

“Please! Please, I never thought that he would do that! I never thought he would let him go! I had nothing to do with it! _You have to believe me_!”

“Get rid of him.” She growls at Sampson, her new head of security. The hulking man stalks silently over to the scientist and grabs him by the upper arm. The man struggles, but achieves nothing as he is dragged away.

“And who is the other man?” Mrs Utterson asks, returning to the monitors.

“Does anyone know? Does anyone recognise him?”

There are a few mutters in the negative, but nobody comes forward to confess.

She grinds her teeth. Her nails bite into her palms, drawing blood from wounds that hurt far less than they would if she were human.

“You find them. You find Alexander Melas, and you find his associate and _you bring me back Hyde_!”

They scatter in the wake of her fury, soldiers and civilians alike, and the boy at the computer in front of her curls into himself, hunching his shoulders as if expecting her to hit him. It would give Mrs Utterson more pleasure to kill him and flay his skin off his bones, but above her the lights are flickering and she can feel that other wretched woman stirring at the back of her head.

“You will regret it.” She tells the pixelated figures of the two thieves as they retreat down the hall jerkily, supporting Hyde between them.

“I will ensure that you regret this.”

* * *

 

John sits bolt upright in bed, unsure what’s woken him. His bedside alarm reads 6:32 and the headache he went to sleep with is still folded snugly over his brain. There is a huge, jarring crash from downstairs, like someone overturned a piano, and then a short, high-pitched scream and John is kicking off the sheets and running before it even connects.

Mrs Hudson. That’s Mrs Hudson screaming.

He takes the stairs three at a time, and explodes into the living room with his gun at the ready.

Mrs Hudson is huddled against the wall, her mouth open in a tiny ‘O’ of terror, one hand clutching at her heart.

“Are you alright? Are you hurt?” John reaches out to touch her shoulder, but she points silently to the kitchen and shakes her head.

John walks towards the kitchen, every nerve alight, and stumbles slightly over what he realises are the tangle of blankets he had put on the unconscious man they had rescued last night.

It’s still dark enough outside that he has to squint into the gloom. The freezer door of the old fridge is swinging open, and in the faint artificial light of its glow John can see dark smudges of blood on the floor, catching its faint metallic scent.

Hyde has apparently attempted to use the huge kitchen table as a crude barricade to block the entrance, but it has tipped too far and now lies on its top, wooden legs thrusting oddly into the air.

John moves forward cautiously, gun in both hands and stares into the furthermost corner. His patient is huddled there, and in the silence he can hear the tearing of his teeth against the raw steak, the squelch of the meat as Hyde devours it.

And at last Hyde looks up at John, and his eyes are not human.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have these terrible plot bunnies in which Mrs Hudson decides Hyde is just misunderstood and starts just mothering him like she did Sherlock. Like making him cookies, and buying him scarves, and scolding him when he’s evil. It would be both adorable and disturbing.


End file.
